Avoiding incest when creating a race of hybrids

I want to write a fantasy story that involves a romance between an elf and a dwarf. They need to end up creating (or largely contributing to) a race of elf-dwarf hybrids. And I mean a sustainable race with a population that can last thousands of years, not just a few kids.

At first I thought of making dwarves like queen bees, and having hundreds of kids. Then I thought about it from the elf's perspective, and why would anybody have sex with a vagina that births hundreds of babies? Then I thought of perhaps the dwarves keep their females in breeding communities within their cities. Therefore, if a queen dwarf (still keeping them as matriarchies even if they're not bug-like) fell in love with an elf, she would give him free pickings of the brothel. Weird by our (and the elf's) standards, but that's just how dwarves live. I also had the idea of dwarves transferring their fetus in artificial wombs of a sort. This would bring me back to square one with possible insect like dwarves.

However, in all situations, I realized my biggest problem. Even if I could make it believable that two people gave birth to a population big enough to sustain itself and create their own culture, how did I get through the issue that their offspring are going to have to screw their brothers and sisters to maintain their population? Should I play it like Adam and Eve and just say not to think about it much and end the story? Having multiple elf-dwarf couples seems a little convenient especially since their romance is supposed to be unique.

First question, how come the dwelf kids can't pair up with unrelated pure elves and dwarves? So elves pair up with more elfish hybrids and dwarves vice-versa (except for the weirdos who are like the Queen [Though mimicking royal tastes can be a reason to do something in itself])?

Would it be easier to think of it as the Queendom splitting from dwarf culture by absorbing some elf cultural traits - even for the population that is pure dwarf?

The problem with the queen bee analogy is that while the queen lays thousands of eggs very few of them are fertile children. So from a geneticist's perspective the population of a single hive is far below a sustainable population.

After a quick google search, I realized why the ant/bee scenario doesn't really work since unlike the cartoons, a hive only lives as long as their queen, which puts a major crimp in my idea for the dwarves. Apparently all the ants/bees in a colony are produced by a single mate. There aren't males that just lie around the nest humping a queen that's in perpetual labor. Though that could help me...

I wanted the hybrids to be outcasts. Neither race produce many hybrids, so bedding those weird hybrid people would be strange for them.

Why would they be outcasts, though? I mean, outside of the basic "they're different" reason because that one does cause people to be ostracised some but generally isn't enough to turn them into outcasts.

Also, what are you really trying to write? Romance, or the resulting family tree?

Because if you just want to write romance then there's really no need to make sure that there's nothing potentially squicky happening as a result of it; people do weird things because of "romance" often enough that it would be weird if nothing like that happened when there's the possibility.

And if what you want to write is the family tree of a potential new race then surely you do realise that, as unique as this particular pair's romance is supposed to be, chances are that in some other region someone else had done the same. Heck, if the races (dwarves and elves) live in the proximity of each other and don't find each other repugnant by default and they're (for some reason) normally fertile with each other, then there's a high chance that there are at least a few hybrids as a result of ... not exactly consensual couplings (I mean rape, yes). Potentially squicky from the get-go and not at all light-hearted? Sure, but things like that do happen and could happen, and for as long as you don't specifically say it's like that in the story, it might very well be so but people won't really be able to protest about it (in any meaningful way, that is).

Also, though I do not want to glorify incest in any way, the mishaps in the genetic code that can be attributed to incest are all things that can also happen naturally and inbreeding simply raises the chances of it happening; in other words, get lucky and you actually can have a sustainable "people count" from just two people. The things that aren't all that random are recessive genes for various illnesses that the initial couple carries, as having any of those in a population created by just two people means that after some time you will get quite a lot of people who are more than just carriers for that stuff, but considering how different elves and dwarves are normally any offspring of theirs probably wouldn't have to deal with that if they managed to actually live at all, not to mention that a hybrid might happen to be immune to those simply because of not being of either original race. Probably; fantasy worlds tend to have weird diseases, after all, and ailments of that sort aren't something that is explored often.

edited 8th Jul '15 4:22:35 AM by Kazeto

If your willing to have more then just these two people start the race you have a few options. The best example might be if Elf/Dwarfs (Dwelfs?) hybrids are disliked by general society from both ends and so a group of them migrate away to a new distant land ala Puritans. Your couple could end up the "face" of the new race/nation as one of the two is royalty and gives the new kingdom some equivalent to the "mandate of the heavens" to allow them some lethal basis in self rule.

If you really want to play with Dwarf biology however then Perhaps my concept of a Myrmidon might be useful. Myrmidon are based on ants, Soldiers, Worker, Prince castes based around a single breeding queen. Also know in setting as Amazon since 90% of them are females the Princes caste are the only males and fill the role of a male ant in propagated the species. They also they fill a diplomatic function since Myrmidon have intense rivalry with other Myrmidon "City states" to keep the Greek theme going, and only princes are instinctively allowed into other city's due to there pheromones.

However unlike actual ants Princes don't need to couple with a young queen to produce children and instead can have couple with either a Soldier or Worker. If said Worker or Solider is outside the range pheromones of a queen the worker or solider will expand 20 or 30 times in size and become a queen, think a Dark spawn brood mother only self aware and not innately evil and your not far of.

Obviously giving up mobility to birth hundreds of children is not something all Myrmidons look forward too, Psychic connection to all of them or not, so most Myrmidons content themselves taking care of there Mothers children, or if they really want a family without being a queen leaving to find themselves a human they can hybridize with.

why is this important? well if your dwarfs are like Myrmidon with similar social structure to ants all it takes to make a half elf/dwarf race is for the Elf of the pairing to act like a Prince and set the dwarfs body into "queen mode" which neither thought possible because the Dwarf was a difference species then the Elf.

However if you go that way you might have difficulty in depicting a eusocial sentient species in a way that is interesting, but done right you could have a very, very interesting race. the look on somebody's face when they figure out "hay all this city is populate only with half/dwarfs and they all look like sisters." would be priceless.